A phone rang, and the man in the front passenger seat answered and spoke, telling the caller that the operation was a success, and that they had picked up a person from Delhi. He hung up and said to the others, ‘Captain said we should bring him to the centre.’
It was stuffy inside; Arjun guessed the windows were rolled up, and that they were tinted, for them to risk driving around with him in the city. The colonel dead—he couldn’t believe it. But now was not the time to dwell upon it. He had to escape or he would end up sharing the colonel’s fate.
About ten minutes later, after travelling along a bumpy road with lesser traffic, the car slowed down, took a turn and came to a halt. The man on his right pushed him and slapped him. ‘Utho, utho,’ he said. Arjun pretended to come to his senses, and let himself be helped out of the car. It was dark and they were walking over hard ground, then there were lights and a cemented floor below. He could hear a door opening and then he was being led through a house and into a room where he was pushed down on a chair and his blindfold was removed.
Before him, seated at a government-office-type steel desk, was a muscular, middle-aged Naga man with a crew cut. Dressed in an olive-green jacket, he was going through Arjun’s wallet and phone.
‘What is your name, and why were you with Colonel Khrienuo?’ the man barked.
Arjun had prepared an answer on the way. ‘Arjun Arora. I had come to meet Mr Khrienuo on some business. Who are you?’
He tried to look around the room with its faded white paint flaking off the walls, but strong hands turned his head towards his interrogator, probably the one called ‘Captain’.
‘You are in a detention centre, Mr Arora,’ the man said. ‘What business do you do?’
Just as he had suspected—an NPG detention centre. He had heard of these places—illegal jails where captives were kept chained, sometimes tortured and killed. He must not show any emotion to these men, he thought.
Arjun appeared to hesitate, then said, ‘Chemicals. He wanted a supply of pseudoephedrine. From the medicine factories in Uttarakhand.’
The man looked up at the four men standing behind Arjun, then lowered his gaze.
‘This is the bloody revolution they are doing? Saala, drug smugglers!’
‘Whatever your problem is with him, it doesn’t concern me. So let me go.’
‘Where were you staying, Mr Arora?’
‘I was a guest at Mr Khrienuo’s house,’ Arjun said.
The crew-cut man frowned and studied Arjun’s licence for a while, then stood up.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be with us for a while, Mr Arora,’ he said, and then to the others in Nagamese, ‘Put the chains on him and take him to an empty room.’
One of the men from the car spoke up, ‘Captain, there are no more chains here.’
‘What? Why is that so?’
‘We’ve run out. You were supposed to get them.’
The Captain looked like he would explode. ‘Then go and find some!’
Arjun was marched up a flight of steps and along a dirty corridor. An open door showed him a scrawny young tribal boy chained from his ankles and hands and neck squatting on the floor and eating rice from a plate. He was taken into a small room with a bare bed where he was made to sit. Along with the men from the car were two young uniformed cadres with AK rifles in their hands, one a boy, the other a girl. One of the men stepped forward and untied the tight loops around Arjun’s wrists, then clamped on a pair of handcuffs, the key to which he handed to the male guard. Arjun saw that there was a bunch of keys on the boy’s belt. The windows, which were closed, had bars on them and the room didn’t appear to have an attached toilet. Words were exchanged between the two cadres and the four men, and then the men went away after a final look and laugh at Arjun.
He patted his pockets: they had taken his cigarettes as well. His body hurt, but there didn’t seem to be any cuts or broken bones. The sight of the captive boy blackened with grime had shocked him: he was in deep trouble. And how much longer did he have before they chained him up as well? His guards had also assumed that he didn’t understand Nagamese and he listened to them talk as he stared down at the floor. The boy wanted to go watch a football match on TV with the other boys, and was trying to get her to guard Arjun, saying that the captive looked dazed and weak. She finally agreed, on condition that the boy took over after dinner. The boy left, and the girl sat down on the only chair, placed the gun across her lap, and pulled out her mobile phone. Arjun lay back on the bed and studied her out of the corner of his eye. She couldn’t be more than eighteen—a rural girl with a broad face and stout hands. What a place to be in, he thought, awaiting chains while being guarded by a child soldier.
A few more minutes passed. The beginnings of a plan were starting to come to him. He had to try it, or risk not leaving this place alive. Just then the boy who had gone to watch the football match came hurrying back. He poked Arjun with the barrel of his AK, indicating that he should get up, and told the girl that the colonel was coming along with the captain. Someone higher up, Arjun thought as he waited. He just hoped he wasn’t moved from this place, where he felt he had a chance of getting out. The chatter of his two guards ceased, and Arjun could make out the heavy footsteps along the corridor as well.
‘He’s in here,’ he heard the Captain say, and the tall man in an army uniform who stepped in made Arjun’s breath catch in his throat. It was his old tormentor, Colonel Khanna.
32
HE HADN’T CHANGED. THE FLESHY face with the hooked nose and the protruding eyes, the face of a sadist, the face Arjun had buried a fist in after one insult too many at the officer’s mess in Jorhat. A grin spread across the face as Khanna came closer, showing his yellow teeth.
‘So it is you,’ he rasped in his nicotine-thickened voice, ‘the bastard Arjun Arora. When Captain here called me I had just reached a wedding. But when I heard the name ‘Arjun Arora’ I knew I had to come and check. What the fuck are you doing here, Arora?’
‘I was minding my own business,’ he replied. ‘Not something you would ever understand, would you, Colonel Khanna?’
‘Well, who cares what the hell you came here for. These boys will get it out of you. And then we can have some fun with you. You’re lucky I have a wedding to attend tonight.’
‘You never said no to free food and booze, did you, Khanna?’
The Colonel smiled coldly, then stepped forward and clamped a hand on Arjun’s throat. ‘How’s your lovely wife, Arora? Maybe we’ll give her a call and ask her to come down here.’
It took all his self-control to stop himself from kneeing Khanna in the groin. The two men locked eyes, and then Khanna shoved him back against the wall.
‘Keep him well guarded tonight,’ Khanna said to the Captain. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, you half-breed bastard,’ Khanna said to Arjun, and turned to leave, but then stopped. ‘Captain, do you have anyone who can cut off a head well?’
‘I can do it myself, sir,’ the Captain replied.
‘Excellent. Then we can have a little headhunting in our camp tomorrow night.’
With that, Arjun’s former commanding officer strode out of the room. The Captain barked an order at the two guards and followed the army man. Arjun sat down on the bed. The killing, his kidnapping and now this, the last person in the world he would have wanted to meet. He felt shaken to the core. What the hell was Khanna doing here? But of course, they were all in bed together now. The Captain must have called Khanna to ask for advice on what to do.
Arjun stretched out on the bed, willing himself to remain calm. He had to get out of this place. The boy chatted with the girl for a while and then, when the sound of engines starting was heard, he went out, possibly to check if the coast was clear. He returned after a few minutes and told the girl to hang on till dinnertime. After he left, Arjun slowly counted to a hundred, then clutched his stomach and started moaning. The girl l
ooked up from her mobile phone with annoyance in her eyes. He gently rocked from side to side, before lifting his head and calling out to her, ‘Sister.’
She pocketed her phone, picked up the AK and came over, covering him with the gun.
‘What happen, ha?’ she asked roughly.
‘My stomach,’ he said. ‘Loose motion. I need to go to the toilet, please.’
The girl looked annoyed and unsure. Arjun let out another groan.
‘Please, it’s going to come out. I have to go to the toilet, sister.’
She left the room, banging the door shut behind her. Arjun sat up on the bed. The seconds passed, then the door was flung open by the boy guard, with the girl behind him.
This time it was his turn to ask: ‘What happened to you?’
‘Brother, I’m having loose motions, please take me to the toilet.’
The young guard looked at him with contempt and loathing, then gestured with his AK and barked, ‘Come, get up.’
Arjun was led down the corridor by the guard. At the end was a wood-and-tin door, painted pink, water seeping through below it. To the right was a wall, and down to the left was a bolted door with an open ventilator above.
‘There, bathroom,’ the guard said. ‘Go inside.’
Arjun turned, and raised his shackled wrists. ‘Please, brother. I won’t try anything.’
The guard looked disgusted with him. Finally he motioned for Arjun to extend his hands, while he shifted the gun to his right hand and fumbled for the key in his belt with the other. He placed the barrel in Arjun’s midriff and with his left hand unlocked the cuffs.
The corridor behind them was empty, Arjun noted, and the safety on the rifle was off. It was time. He removed the cuffs slowly, then caught the barrel with his left hand and yanked it up even as his right hand (with the palm down) chopped the guard’s throat, loosening his grip on the gun. Arjun pulled it towards him and turned it around. The guard had bent over, one hand on his throat, and as he straightened up Arjun pushed the barrel into him and shot him once. A muffled cough, and a dark stain appeared on the front of his uniform; the guard fell to his knees with a surprised look.
‘Sorry, brother,’ Arjun said and stepped past him.
In the room the girl was on her chair, busy with her phone once again. She looked up as his shadow fell on her, and would have screamed, but Arjun raised a finger to his lips, stepped forward and took her AK from her lap.
‘Your friend is dead,’ he said. ‘Make a sound and I’ll shoot you too. Get up!’
He slung her gun over his left shoulder and trained the other gun on her back and made her walk out of the room.
‘If you help me I’ll let you go, okay? Otherwise you’ll end up dead like him.’
To their left, down the corridor, the boy’s body lay slumped on the floor. He made her go down the steps to the ground floor. If anyone stepped out he would have to start shooting, there would be no other way. But the ground floor was deserted as well. From somewhere came the sound of a television, where maybe the others were still watching the football match.
‘I need my wallet and my phone,’ he told her, ‘then I’ll leave. Do you understand?’
She nodded, scared now at this unexpected turn of events. There was a door with an ‘Office’ sign above it, and he made her open it and enter. She switched on a light, and Arjun saw it was the room where the Captain had been sitting. He closed the door and looked around. There was a bunch of keys hanging on the wall behind the Captain’s desk.
‘Open the drawers in the desk with those keys,’ he told her.
His phone and wallet were in the bottom drawer. A quick glance inside showed him the money and his licence were still there. He pocketed them both. Just then there was the sound of footsteps outside. Arjun froze. They faded away. He switched off the light, opened the door and carefully went upstairs with the girl in front of him. Time was running out.
‘If you try to scream or shout, I’ll come back and shoot you, understood?’
He made her get into the room where he had been held, took her phone from her, and bolted the door from the outside and placed her phone on the ground. Then he went to the end of the corridor, stepping over the dead body of the guard, and opened the door on the left. There was a small balcony outside and Arjun saw he was at the rear of the house, with high walls topped with broken glass all around. Slinging the gun in his hands over his right shoulder, he got on to the balcony wall, turned around and lowered himself with his hands. His feet got some support on a ledge above a window, and then he half-turned and jumped, jarring his feet and knees as he landed on the hard ground. Crouching, he took a few seconds in the darkness to catch his breath. Out of the building, but he still had to get out of the compound. The windows were all closed, thankfully, and he crept forward in the darkness through the rubbish-strewn strip between the high wall and the building. He could feel his heart hammering from the adrenaline flooding his system. Arjun saw that the front of the compound, where the road ran past it, was in darkness, with the light coming from the front of the two-storey building. Opposite the detention camp was a darkened, unfinished three-storey structure.
Edging along close to the building, he poked his head out to take a look. To his surprise there was no one out front, just a white Bolero with a Manipur number plate parked there. He wondered what to do with the two guns for a moment, before tossing one into the rubbish behind him and then slinking along the side of the wall in the direction of the road, the other AK in his hands.
‘Hoi, kun ase?’ a voice yelled out in Nagamese. ‘Hey, who is it?’
Arjun turned and saw three men standing in the veranda on the ground floor. One of them was unmistakeably a member of the gang of four from the Alto. He made his decision in a split-second. The safety on the AK was off, and he raised the gun and let off three bursts at the Bolero, puncturing one of the tyres and shattering its windscreen even as the three men dropped behind the short wall and started shouting. Next he raised the gun and loosened off two bursts at the high lamplight atop the building. Darkness fell as the lamp shattered.
Arjun started running towards the road. He heard the chatter from an automatic weapon and bullets whining past his head. Half-turning, he sprayed the remainder of the magazine in the direction he had come from. The Alto that had brought him here had turned right into the compound, so now he ran to the left. There was a clump of shrubbery ahead and he tossed the AK there and ran on, past shops and houses and empty patches of land. He slowed down about 200 metres ahead. He could see a couple of autorickshaws by the road and, ahead of them, a lighted gateway of some sort. Taking a couple of deep breaths he approached the autorickshaws, and pretending to be a drunk, said in Nagamese that he wanted to go to the shacks near the railway station, no matter the price. A young boy with a black bandana tied around his head asked him to get in.
‘Want to have some fun, eh, brother?’ the young autorickshaw driver asked.
Arjun leant back, his face in the shadows. The lighted gateway he saw was of a BSF transit camp, with a couple of guards in their camouflage uniform out in front. Another bit of luck, to have got an autorickshaw before approaching the transit camp on foot.
‘Yes,’ he said, trying to sound high, ‘I need some fun tonight, brother.’
They crossed a large pond and then the autorickshaw took a right on to the highway, heading back into the city. He had a vague idea they had come from the Half Nagarjan area. Arjun felt a little less anxious now, but still, those people could do anything to track him down. At a red light there was a slow-moving mass of cars, and he had to fight the impulse to get down and start walking. Finally the autorickshaw trundled up Golaghat Road and came to a halt under the flyover. Arjun thrust a few 100-rupee notes into the driver’s hands before hurrying back past the pedestrians to his hotel.
33
THE KINGFISHER’S EVENING RECEPTIONIST—A Naga lady—didn’t give him a second glance as he asked for his room key. Apart from the dus
t and mud on his sneakers and jeans, he didn’t look too worse for the wear. He went up to the room on the third floor and washed his hands and face in the bathroom. The enormity of what had happened was just starting to sink in. He felt an almost absurd sense of relief at having made it back to the hotel, but he realized he wasn’t out of danger yet. Taking out his phone he tried calling Abbas but his friend wasn’t reachable. It struck him that the Captain would have surely checked the number of the phone, and Colonel Khanna could use his resources to track it down. He switched off the phone.
For a moment Arjun stood looking around the small room, wondering what to do next. Should he carry on, or should he drop the case and try to get to Assam? In the end it wasn’t even a choice. He had to do what he had to do, Khanna or no Khanna. There wasn’t any transport to Imphal at night, so he would have to wait till the morning. First, though, he needed cigarettes. And whisky. There was some left in the bottle Abbas had brought, but he would need more to get through the night. He stepped out of his room, and spotted the bearer from Tripura on the floor below, sitting beside a crockery cupboard. Arjun asked the man to come up. His name was Shyamal. In his room he explained to the bearer that he was in a bit of trouble and required help, for which he would pay. He explained what he needed: a free room, preferably on the fourth floor, without anyone coming to know about it now, an early morning ticket to Imphal from one of the Tata Winger counters outside the hotel, and whisky and cigarettes. Shyamal agreed, saying he would go check about the room, and took money for the ticket and other essentials.
After he had left, Arjun used some toilet paper and a rag he found in the wardrobe to clean his shoes and his jeans the best he could. Then he packed his few belongings in the backpack and waited. The Captain’s men didn’t know he was in this hotel, but his name was on the register, so he had to be careful. The bearer was back a while later with the ticket, cigarettes and alcohol. He said there was an empty room on the second floor he could let Arjun slip inside. Arjun picked up his backpack and went down a floor with him, entering a room like the one he had just left, but with food stains on the table. Still, that was the least of his worries at the moment. He asked Shyamal to arrange for a glass, a couple of bottles of mineral water and something for dinner, and tipped him generously.
More Bodies Will Fall Page 19
